In February 2014, her son, Luke, was killed by his father after cricket training – he was just 11 years old.

Since that day, Ms Batty has been a prominent campaigner for the stamping out of domestic violence.

One third of all Australian women experience physical violence and children play witness to many of these cases.

Ms Batty said this needed to change. 

“This is a huge problem in our society and you really wonder why it’s taken so long for people to believe the enormity of the problem,” she said.

“We need our society to understand that this is an enormous problem and it can affect any family.” 

Ms Batty said while the acknowledgment of domestic violence was increasing, there was still a long way to go.

“There’s still a lot of victim-blaming, there’s still a lot of pushback on this being a gendered issue,” she said.

“When we’re having these conversations we can start to challenge some of those attitudes.

“All of us are horrified at the thought of children being impacted and I think what we have to truly understand is that even if the violence isn’t directed at the children, the trauma around that can be equally as damaging.”

Since the horrendous day of Luke’s death, Ms Batty has been named 2015 Australian of the Year, lent her voice to many campaigns and spoken to the ever-increasing discussion around domestic violence and how we can prevent it. 

Looking back on how much her life has changed in the past two years, Ms Batty continues to grieve for her son and still gets understandably choked up when she talks about children – but she is making real changes to our society.

“One of my milestones was releasing a book last year, so everywhere I go around Australia, people are learning from that,” she said.

“Writing that was very hard to do but I knew it was right to do it and I’m so pleased I’ve got that as a permanent record of Luke’s journey with me.”

Looking into the future, Ms Batty said there was a long list of changes Australians could make to create a safer community. 

“We need to understand the causes of family violence, what it looks like and stop assuming that it’s just physical assault,” she said.